63. Chapter 63
Chapter 63
A va’s attention was pulled to the administration building the moment Derek stopped the car. Students walked around or stood in groups as they waited for their lessons to start, and nothing seemed amiss.
Did she have an appointment with the Dean? No. He had refused to see her again and cancelled all her appointments.
“What is it?” Derek asked.
She shook her head as she undid her seatbelt.
“It’s nothing. I just feel like I forgot something important,” she answered.
“What else do you feel?”
The blond one asked this. She frowned. Was he asking how she was feeling healthwise? Or mentally? Because mentally, she was spiralling, and she couldn’t anchor herself.
“Nothing,” she shrugged.
“No pain?”
“A little pain. Which is weird because I normally wake up fine.”
She hadn’t thought of that. Jared’s stuff must have worn off now, which meant she had to be extra careful in training.
Derek looked away, his eyes glinting as if she had just told him some bad news.
“How is this even possible? It will mess up everything,” the blond one growled.
She didn’t understand what they meant. Were they still talking about her?
“Um... Thank you for the lift. I’m going to walk to my block from here,” she said as she made to open the door.
“Wait,” Derek said.
She stopped and waited. Derek and his friend were looking at each other, and the look on their faces told her they were mind-linking.
“You’ve been asleep for three days,” Derek said quietly. “I told them you’d come down with a serious human bug and needed rest. Tell them that if they ask.”
She reeled back. Three days?!
“I don’t understand... How? Was it the forest? Did it do something to me?”
“Keep your voice down,” the blond one snarled. “Don’t mention that to anyone. You’ve caused enough problems.”
She had known she had been breaking the rules when she had gone into it. And that meant Ezekiel had broken the rules to follow. Was that why he wasn’t there?
“Where’s Ezekiel?”
The two wolves said nothing. She knew she wouldn’t get any answers from them about this, so she grabbed her bag and got out of the car. The only other person she could have asked was Jared, and he’d turned out to be an asshole like Emily. Why were they keeping it a secret? And if Ezekiel was in trouble, why weren’t they helping him? Were they not a pack?
Walking to the pavement, she stopped to look again at the administration building. There was something important there. Maybe she had it marked on her tablet.
She was about to reach for it when she felt the pain in her head like it was being split into two. She dropped her bag and doubled over, grabbing her temples as if that would make it stop. But the pain stopped just as quickly as it had started. She took a deep breath and straightened, and her gaze was pulled to the building again.
Her feet started moving before she was aware of it. It wasn’t until she had walked in that she asked herself what she was doing. But there was something—a compulsion of sorts.
“What happened?”
When she turned around, the two wolves were right behind her. Derek was holding her bag, and he looked distressed. But she knew this wasn’t about her. This was about whatever they were hiding from her. About Ezekiel.
“I don’t know. It just stopped.”
She saw a few students waiting inside, some seated in the waiting area, and they were all looking at her.
“I need to go,” she mumbled, grabbing the bag from Derek and walking out.
Everything just felt off. As she walked to the First Year block, she was aware that the other students had stopped to stare at her, but she kept her head down and ignored them.
Before she turned to her building, she caught sight of Emily standing not too far away. Her head cleared and was replaced by anger. This was the wolf who’d led her to an ambush. She could have died, and Emily knew this.
The Omega stood frozen in her spot as if the guilt was eating her up. There was a look on her face that she couldn’t decipher. Fear? She needed to be afraid. She should have reported Emily and her friends for what had happened, but she knew it was pointless. Without any bruises, no one would believe her. But once Ezekiel came back, they would have to listen to him.
She looked away from the Omega and carried on walking. She wouldn’t try to make any more friends here, not if they were all backstabbing cowards.
Her classes pretty much went the same way, although the mood was more sombre. She didn’t know if something had happened or if it was just her mood. Everything was so dark and dreary. Like there was no sunshine even though it was a beautiful, sunny day. All the students whispered, and some made the usual comments about her. The teachers didn’t even comment about her missed days or bother to tell her what she had missed. Not that she cared about missed lessons in Flower Arranging and how to sit dinner guests.
The douche Alpha called Dexter, who had bullied her from the first day and then helped Claire knock her out, came past her a couple of times and knocked her shoulder roughly.
“Weak human. Why did they even let you in here? You look like shit just because of a tiny, microscopic virus.”
She ignored him and walked towards the dining hall. She was still hungry and felt so weak that the thought of going to training after this made her feel ill.
The first person she saw there was Jared. He sneered at her and looked away. She had really thought they were friends because he had helped her many times. The dining hall seemed to quiet down when she joined the queue to get her food. She kept her eyes down, as she had done all day. She was not in the mood to talk to or argue with anyone, not when she had this nagging thought in her head that Ezekiel was in trouble. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much, but she put it down to her guilt. She was the cause of it.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen Claire anywhere, either.
What exactly had the Alpha done to her?
By the time she finished her food and headed over to set up the training rooms, she knew she would have to make Derek and his friend talk. She had all these crazy thoughts and images running around in her head, but she wasn’t even sure what they were. Hallucinations? Dreams? Like that beach. Why would she even think of a beach in such perfect detail when she had never been to one in her life? And yet, it felt like she was there. She could even smell the salt in the breeze.
Maybe she was going crazy. Perhaps the thing in the forest was still in her head.